He might register as a Republican but he is not, in principle, a Republican. What’s is the government going to to - track the mileage of every vehicle? Only something that would be a Liberty violating intrusion would hand over to the government the changes in your vehicles mileage.
Less intrusive is the understanding that (a) fuel taxes are a user fee for using the roads, and (2) the public roads that are not private and not toll roads need public funding and the least intrusive means are fuel taxes, and (3) as vehicles’ average miles per gallon keep improving, you may traverse the roads for as many miles as before, but the net user fee collected per mile is less, therefore, we only need to peg fuel taxes to the average miles per gallon, adjusting it as the average miles per gallon improves; which, without any other formal fuel tax increase, will simply raise the same revenue per average mile driven as before.
Republicans ought to understand that an adjustable fuel tax rate based on changes to the average miles per gallon, is (a) extremely less intrusive than the big brother means of tracking everyone’s vehicle mileage, and (b) is not intended or designed to increase what someone is paying in fuel taxes, just match current revenue collected to any improvement in the average miles per gallon.
It could be implemented in no less than 6 year increments.
For example:
If in six years the average miles per gallon has increased from 23.6 to 22.4 (2011 to 2017) that would mean a 1.2 mile per gallon improvement. That would mean on the same gallon of gas, cars and light trucks drove on average 1.2 miles further, but paid the same fuel taxes as when they drove 1.2 miles less per gallon.
The miles per gallon improvement was 5.35714285714286% yet, with no change in the fuel tax/user fee, less revenue per average mile per gallon was actually collected. If the fuel tax was raised by the same % as the % improvement in the average miles per gallon, it would in fact be essentially revenue neutral compared to what had been collected before.
I see nothing “anti-conservative” about it, and much prefer it to the politics that either refuses to admit we are collecting less user-fee-fuel-taxes per average mile per gallon, when average mile gallon is improving, or the politics that just wants to raise fuel taxes for the sake of raising a tax, or the big brother gambits of knowing the changes in our vehicles miles driven over any period of time.